Illinois Casinos Can Now Hire Convicted Felons for Nongaming Positions
Illinois casinos feature a larger pool of hospitality workers to employ from after Gov. JB Pritzker (D) signed legislation that lifts the state’s prohibition on convicted felons workings interior commercial message casinos.
Pritzker on Fri signed Senate Bill 1462, a bill that amends the Prairie State Gambling Act to earmark individuals with certain felony convictions to go for for non-gaming positions at state-licensed casinos. SB 1462 was authored by say Sen. Henry Martyn Robert Peters (D-Chicago) and res publica Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) inwards conjunctive with Unite Here Local 1, a leading hospitality and gaming trades union in the Land of Lincoln.
The statute amends the state gambling law to allow the Prairie State Gaming Board to dispose felons for positions the like housekeepers, waitstaff, chefs and cooks, bartenders, bellmen, porters, and dishwashers. Individuals with felony convictions remain prohibited from pursuing gaming positions such as tabularize mettlesome dealers and expansion slot attendants.
Here inwards the Land of Lincoln, we believe that people merit second chances — and that includes the formerly incarcerated and those who have been convicted of a felony,” Pritzker said in a resign after signing the statute.
“As we transmute our justness system of rules aside from incarceration and towards rehabilitation, we are creating opportunities for Illinoisans who’ve made mistakes to unafraid gainful engagement and build improve lives for themselves, their families, and their communities,” Pritzker added.
Applicant Eligibility
Unlike other states that get passed similar measures to tolerate convicted felons to reenter the workplace by right smart of the commercial-grade gaming industry, Illinois’ statute does non explicitly prohibit violent felony offenders from participating inwards the program. Instead, SB 1462 directs the Illinois Gaming Board to deliberate various factors inward deciding whether an individual qualifies to throw a permission that is required to piece of work privileged an IGB-regulated establishment.
Among the IGB’s many qualifications for licensure, the body politic says a individual must be of goodness grapheme and must not link socially or in byplay with persons who get a “notorious or unsavoury reputation.”
The IGB’s IX qualifying criteria, before Pritzker signed SB 1462, disqualified individuals with a crook felony offense. But SB 1462 now directs the IGB to assess the length of clip since the felony article of faith occurred, the person’s keep down of convictions, the nature and inclemency of the law-breaking and its telling to the refuge and protection of others, the facts and circumstances surrounding the conviction, the eld of the soul at the clip of the conviction, and any evidence of rehabilitation efforts.
Illinois casinos, like many businesses in the body politic and crosswise the country, carry on to struggle to chance qualified employees. Unite Here Local 1 President Karen Kent, whose sum represents rough 15,000 hospitality workers in Windy City and Northwest Indiana, says the employ jurisprudence testament set aside for more workers to pursue a hospitality career.
“Our trade union has worked concentrated to ensure that hospitality workers at Illinois casinos can buoy hold a course to right jobs,” said Kent. “But our act is uncompleted if so many of our friends, our neighbors, love members of our families, and our communities, are forever locked come out of these jobs because of a prior conviction. Today, we’re giving people trust for a indorse chance.”
Bill Twofold
Supporters of the work note say not only if does the lawmaking increment the hiring pocket billiards for casinos but also helps foreclose offenders from reoffending.
Allowing workers to do jobs in the casinos that make out not affect gaming decreases the liklihood that they testament backslide and wind upwards plunk for in prison,” said Peters. “Mass incarceration and profoundly deep income inequality are tied together. There is an inhere contradiction inward expression that you require to live toughened on offence piece you are leaving people out of economical opportunity.”
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